Just started working on mounting some of my antlers and thought I’d share it with you guys so you can see how it’s done and be able to do it yourself.
There will be lots of photos and it may take a few days to get all the steps down so please be patient with me.
Here’s what I started with.
First step is to clean all the hide off the skull plate. This is really easy just after the animal is harvested. If you wait as long as I did on these it is a real pain. It then becomes a job for hammers and chisles and stout knives and plyers and…you get the idea. Make sure you get all the junk out from around the pedicles because you will need the room in the finishing process.
Next we need to make sure the skull is cut properly. I like the back to line up like this:
Then I grind off the “wings” (for lack of better term) as shown below, or just cut off the lower portion of the skull.
Then you need to cut a piece of plywood to mount the skull too. I like 3/8″, but this is 1/2″ and works just fine. Everyone will have their favorite shape, I like this:
They are approx. 4″ wide and 5″ tall.
They should be just a bit wider than the skull plate as shown below.
Then we just need to drill some holes and screw it down to the plywood.
Get the skull near the top of the plywood so the back angle of the pedicles goes straight down to the edge of the wood. This will make shapeing it later look more natural. If the skull does not fit flat to the plywood you can at this point just put some shims under the areas that need to be raised.
I just grind off the screws that stick through the back. Also at this point I write on the back the state, weapon used and date that I took the deer. Nice to be able to look back at that in later years.
More to come…
